


awakened, infinite

by Gileonnen



Series: while joined( Glass, Sky ) [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Comfort, Dreams and the Future War Cult, Embraces and Handholding, M/M, Moments of Quiet (and Disquiet), Multi, Nightmares, Premonitions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 15:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20211676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: Pahanin wakes screaming and can't remember why. Praedyth and Kabr help him to find sleep again.





	awakened, infinite

Pahanin wakes screaming and can't remember why.

Kabr's up in an instant, because of _course_ he is. His fists gleam silver with crackling arc energy, as though Pahanin's nightmares are something that can be punched through if he just pours enough Light into them. Which is incredibly sweet, albeit fundamentally misguided. "Who's there?" he demands.

Pahanin sighs and reaches up to touch Kabr's elbow. "No one's there," he says. "It was just a bad dream. Come back to bed."

The door cracks open. Praedyth peers in, still dressed in a tunic and trousers. He looks haggard and tired; his hair is tied back from his face, but a few shorter curls have fallen free. They catch the light behind him, blue-black and shining. "I heard screaming," he says. "Everything all right?"

"Just a bad dream," Pahanin says again. "And since I can't actually disappear into the void in embarrassment, I have to request that you both pretend I reacted with appropriately professional aplomb." He lies back against his pillow with his arms splayed above his head, trying to steady his racing heart. His skin is icy with sweat.

Kabr glances at Praedyth. Pahanin sees half a conversation passing over Kabr's face, worry asking and gratitude answering. Then the bed dips, and Praedyth's curling up against Pahanin's other side. "Really, I'm fine; it's--" Pahanin begins, but Praedyth kisses away the end of that sentence, and then there's nothing to be done but answer the kiss. It feels a bit surreal, with Pahanin in his soft pajama bottoms and Praedyth's rougher daywear pressing against his bare chest, but a normal sort of surreal. A sleeping-late-on-a-weekend, out-of-step-with-time surreal, not an end-of-the-world surreal.

After a moment, Kabr slides back under the sheets and wraps his arm around Pahanin's waist. He doesn't want them to steady him like this. If they're going to pay attention to him, he'd like it to be because he's brilliant and handsome and charming, not because he's still shaking with the fear of something he can't even remember.

But it feels good to be in their arms. It feels good to have them watching his flanks, making a kind of armor of their bodies. They're warm around him, and he can borrow that warmth until he feels human again.

"What was your dream about?" Praedyth asks after a long, quiet space. His fingers lace through Pahanin's, and he squeezes a little solar warmth into them.

"I don't even remember," admits Pahanin. "It's not important, is it? It was just a dream."

"Our minds extrapolate from our experiences to posit potential futures. The dreaming mind is capable of assembling data that the conscious mind would never allow itself to link together. In those chaotic constellations of images, we can sometimes glimpse unexpected truths."

Pahanin wrinkles his nose. "You've been spending too much time with the Future War Cult."

"You're the writer. You assemble images for a living. Tell me--are they wrong?"

The memory of the dream lies heavy in him. He can feel it waiting in the blind spot between his eyes, almost visible. If he lets himself think too hard about it, he thinks he might glimpse something he doesn't want to see. "There's a difference between a well-crafted metaphor and divination. Fewer entrails, for one."

"Then don't think of it as a vision," Kabr murmurs against his hair. "Think of it as a metaphor."

Pahanin closes his eyes and leans back into Kabr's embrace. _Some distant thing, coming inexorably closer. The dread of watching and being unable to move--unable to change what has been set in motion._ "Like being some prehistoric mammal, watching the approach of an asteroid," he says, his voice no more than a whisper. He'd wanted so much to sound brisk and unemotional. "And not being able to comprehend what's coming. Just ... seeing that light, growing and persistent, and feeling a dread that's so much bigger than your tiny body."

"What do you need?" Kabr asks. He shifts his grip, lays his hand over where Praedyth's and Pahanin's are linked. His palm easily covers both of theirs.

He should let them go. Kabr needs sleep, and Praedyth probably wants to get back to work on whatever was keeping him up late--probably that paper he's been revising for the _Journal on Paracausal Mechanics_. It's ridiculous to keep them here because there's a fear in him so large that it can only come out as a scream.

It's ridiculous, but he wants it all the same.

"Just talk to me," he says at last. "It doesn't matter what about. Read me a tract on Venusian cyanobacteria, if you like. I just want to hear your voices so that I can ... remember that I'm not alone, I suppose."

"We can do that," says Praedyth softly. When Pahanin opens his eyes, he sees the light from the doorway spilling in a narrow line across Praedyth's cheek, the curve of his brow. His eyes are half-hidden in shadow, but Pahanin knows that face well enough to recognize the tenderness there.

He lets them talk to him about Golden Age history, about caring for shade plants, about tachyon particles and the latest Vanguard gossip. After a time, sentences trail off to strings of words: recitations of poetry fragments, elements by atomic weight, the moons of Jupiter. Their voices blend together, Kabr's deep sonorous bass and the delicate lilt of Praedyth's accent making a music of corrections and emendations that approaches harmony.

As they speak, Pahanin's nerves settle, and the prickling cold heat in his skin eases. His pulse slows to match the steady beat of Praedyth's heart, echoing through his veins where their hands are clasped together.

As he drifts off to sleep, Kabr's voice still echoes in his ears, conjugating verbs in a long-forgotten language: past and present and future, _loved_ and _love_ and _will always love._


End file.
